


Where's my love?

by amoralslytherin



Category: Stand By Me (1986)
Genre: Implied Lachambers, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, The Gang is 17, Year of '64
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 03:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12049905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoralslytherin/pseuds/amoralslytherin
Summary: As he finished writing Gordie's response, he looked up at the clock on the wall. Half-past eleven, a week after Chris went missing.





	Where's my love?

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from SYML's 'Where's my love.'

At exactly 9:36 P.M. on the 2nd Thursday of a December in 1964, 17-year-old Christopher Chambers disappeared off of the streets of Castle Rock without so much as a goodbye to his loved ones.

 

Everyone thought it was simple. Chris didn't _have_ any loved ones. He had a father like any other kid, except he didn't really because a father isn't someone who drinks until he can't remember his own name or spits in the direction of his wife's grave every time he drives past the cemetery on Willow Street. Chris remembers the first time he'd seen his father do it. He'd watched with one eye swollen shut from the same bullies he'd been dealing with since the beginning of his middle school years how his father had taken a swig of his beer before he noticed the opening to the graveyard and hacked up a big, slimy ball of 'fuck you' and chucked it in Chris' deceased mother's general direction.

 

Chris had almost choked on his Coca-Cola, instead spitting it out before it had a chance to get into his throat - all over the floor of the car. It had earned him a slap across his cheek and fresh blood that rose to the surface in littered specks from the force of the hit. He didn't do anything for the rest of the drive except listen to the harsh words that were thrown at him.

 

Rumors about Chris' dad molesting him spread like wildfire, then how Chris was supposedly being sold as a sex slave to others by his own flesh and blood. The abuse was obvious to everyone and their mothers and the rumors eventually got to higher authorities, thus leading the police straight to the Chambers residence with the intends to question the man sitting instead with a beer can in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

 

* * *

 

 

On the other side of town where the adults were rich but the kids took care of themselves, where the trees and grass seemed greener but they were all just fake sat Keith Greenwell, the sheriff of Castle Rock and 17-year-old Gordie Lachance.

 

A million thoughts were swimming through Gordie's head. Chris was _missing_. Chris Chambers, a face he'd only seen in hallways for the past 3 years had disappeared off the face of the Earth and nobody had a clue where he had gone.

 

When Gordie had first heard the news, it had felt different. The goons at school hadn't blinked an eye, but Gordie hadn't expected much from them anyway. The wind was still blowing and the sun was still shining but there was a painful absence that Gordie couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was all those summers spent with Chris and the others in the treehouse, or the days when Chris would come to him to cry on his shoulder about his dad or the countless nights they spent sneaking around and sharing sloppy kisses with each other when their girlfriends that their parents had set them up with weren't around. Too many times when they forgot about everyone else and concentrated just on each other and their shallow breaths.

 

Whatever it was, it was eating a hole inside of Gordie.

 

"When was the last time you spoke to Christopher?" The sheriff's words broke him out of his trance. Gordie placed his fingers on his wrist and scratched gently, nervously. Gordie searched the corners of his brain for an answer. "Maybe a couple months ago?" He struggled for something else knowing the sheriff would want him to elaborate. "He and I had the same study hall together," Gordie paused when he noticed Keith was writing his words down on a yellow notepad. Keith looked up after he finished, signaling Gordie to continue. "We got to talking - mostly about his dad, but I'm sure you've visited him already." He finished with a slight edge to his voice. The sheriff sneered. "Lachance, I can assure you that this will go by much faster if you tone down your usual level of sarcasm," As he finished writing Gordie's response, he looked up at the clock on the wall. Half-past eleven, a week after Chris went missing.

 

"Now, neither of us want to be here, but - Jesus Christ, kid, can you stop fidgeting? I'm not going to bite you." Gordie put his arm back by his side instead of its previous position on the couch's armrest, fingers tapping like a madman.

 

The sheriff took a breath and exhaled slowly, raising his fingers to massage out an imaginary headache he had. "Look, this town is built on rumors and lies, so I need the truth," He stopped to write down something on the pad of paper in his hand, a question, probably. Or maybe he was putting Gordie on a scale of one to ten how annoyingly uncooperative he was. _Wouldn't be the first time,_ Gordie thought.

 

"There have been multiple sources that have told me that you and Chris were more than just friends, am I correct?"

 

Gordie wasn't surprised at the question. In fact, he'd been looking forward to it. Been looking forward to the look on his homophobic father's face as he told the sheriff that yes, in fact, he and Chris were Very Best Friends that just so happened to fuck each other on occasion. He'd gone into great detail - more than he should've, really - and raised his voice over his father's shouts.

 

Maybe it was the evening after Gordie had taken care of Chris' cuts and bruises from his dad when Chris had told him that he loved him. Maybe it was during when they were both shaking with the intensity of everything crashing down on them, when Gordie had said it back, or maybe it was after Gordie had cleaned them both and snuggled into Chris' warm embrace.

 

The hole in his heart grew larger with every shout.

 

* * *

 

  
Ray Brower.

 

That's all that Chris had become after he went missing. Curious kid with a mischievous grin that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - the next Ray Brower.

 

Except that Chris wasn't Ray Brower. Chris was Chris, the boy who searched the woods for a dead body with his outcast friends when they were twelve, the boy who was rumored by his own girlfriend to be fucking said outcast friend on the daily, the boy who had stolen the milk money but no one asked him if he really did.

 

Teddy had wanted to ask. He's been wanting to ask for years now, waiting for a chance that maybe he'll see Chris in the hallways on the way to class and eventually get to be friends again. He'd ask him on the weekend over the phone months after they got back to being friends, or when Chris was standing next to him in the now worn down tree house.

 

"Did you?" He'd ask when they were sitting down, and somehow Chris would already know what Teddy was asking. Teddy would stammer with something else to say before the pained expression on Chris' face from the memory got any worse. "I figured you'd told Gordie already..." He didn't finish.

 

Chris was biting the inside of his cheek, signaling that he really didn't want to talk about it. Teddy shouldn't have brought it up - _gosh_ , if he would've just considered how the question would have made Chris feel, Chris probably hasn't thought about it in years.

 

But Teddy never did pass by him in the hallways. Chris had gone missing before he got the chance to.

 

What if Chris was out there in the forest, lying dead on the railroad tracks exactly like Ray Brower?

 

Vern and Gordie had already known about Chris before Teddy had. When Vern had sat down in their 5th-period class, he was visibly shaking. He had lost a lot of weight, so it probably wasn't because of the bullies that roamed the school. There were missing person posters with Chris' frowning face on them all over the school for everyone to see. Teddy guessed that Vern had seen the poster by the bathroom down the hall.

 

Everyone knew that one of the first people the police talked to was Gordie. Somewhere in the middle of secondary school was when people started figuring out that Gordie and Chris were more than just friends. Since then, whenever someone had a question for Chris and couldn't find him, they went to Gordie knowing that they were tied at the hip. After Chris went missing, there had been a dull look on Gordie's face wherever he went.

 

Teddy hadn't been questioned yet. He knew eventually that the sheriff would send someone down to his house to talk with him. They'd ask him the questions he'd already seen coming. Has he spoken to Chris this week? Does he have anything to hide? Has he had any arguments with him lately?

 

The answers would all be no. No, he hasn't spoken to Chris in months. No, he doesn't have anything to hide because if he did he'd be sitting there bawling like a little brat instead of shaking like a chihuahua. No, but arguing is probably all they'd do if they had started talking to each other again.

 

The officer would turn off the voice recorder or put down his pen and take off and Teddy would be left there to wonder when Chris was coming back or when he would be found, and if he was still alive, whether he wanted to be found at all.

 

* * *

 

 

For the first time since his mom died, Chris felt okay. He wasn't exactly happy, but he was far from the state he was in while he was living in Castle Rock. Constantly reminded of his mother and how she was gone, how she was really _not coming back_ and how she left him with his dad, reminded of how even after Ace Merill had been arrested for smashing a beer bottle over another boy's head he still somehow got to him, still made Chris feel like he was waiting for him around every corner.

 

Reminded of how even though he'd told Gordie that he loved him and meant it, he'd still let them drift apart, still let them fall apart.

 

And so Chris left.

 

While his dad was passed out on the couch and Eyeball was out, Chris shoved whatever clothes he could into his backpack. He'd opened the fridge and grabbed some fruits before putting them back, deciding that they'd rot before he could get hungry enough to eat them. A couple granola bars and warm Cola from the pantry and he took off, not even caring about the box of beer that he had left behind. Not caring about the people he left behind. Not really caring about anything except leaving.

 

He didn't look back.

 

He walked straight out of Castle Rock with his backpack weighing heavy on him and a blank look on his face. Opposite direction of the railroad tracks where everything had taken a turn, past the rich neighborhood and the mothers holding their newborn babies, past the school and all the bad memories it held with it.

 

He didn't have a final destination or a plan. Just followed the dirt and rock pathway out of town and into nowhere.

 

Eyeball Chambers had come home to find the house empty, his father off again to the bar down the street where the pretty ladies with short skirts and minimum wage served him until he vomited in the trash can by the door.

 

* * *

 

 

It had been four months after Chris had gone missing when Gordie found him. The police had given up on the search and so had everyone else. The missing person posters were taken down and thrown in the trash, everyone deciding that Chris was gone for good. Dead or alive, he wasn't coming back. Gordie had spoken about Chris to Teddy and Vern, each of them agreeing to switch off and go looking for him. In the woods, the treehouse, the diner, they even spent another two days together venturing down the railroad tracks to the same place that Ray Brower had been killed. Shrubs and weeds had grown around the area, preventing them from going any further without cutting themselves with the thorns.

 

Gordie hadn't stopped looking. While the others started the walk home, Gordie searched the surrounding area and further into the sides of the woods, across the railroad tracks and all the way down the river until it stopped at the mouth. Chris was nowhere to be found. Gordie had camped out for the night, for his search had taken up the rest of the late hours. At five o'clock the next day, he arrived back in the middle of Castle Rock and went straight to the pay phone. All the loose change in his pockets were emptied into the machine as he called the main offices of the next few towns over, sighing deeply when they had seen nothing of Chris.

 

But four towns over in the west direction of Oregon, that's where Gordie found him. Sitting in an abandoned diner that he'd fixed up real pretty, flimsy lights hanging all over the place and the broken jukebox that he'd probably fixed with his mechanic skills playing Chordettes while Chris was singing along, thumping his hands on the spinning chair in front of him to the beat. His hair was longer than the last time Gordie had seen him, almost to his shoulders and blowing slightly in the light wind, glowing a lighter color than usual in the sun. There was a bit of stubble on his chin, a sign that he'd shaved recently but not recent enough to not let the blond hairs make an appearance. His clothes were slightly damp looking, maybe he'd washed them in the river next to the forest a couple blocks away?

 

"You could have called, you asshole."

 

Gordie was fuming. The kind of angry that makes you want to pound your fists against a wall until either it breaks or your knuckles got all bloody, whichever came first. All this time, Chris had been fucking _alive._ He wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere or being tortured by his sick captor. He wasn't all bony and ill-looking from not having enough to eat, not beaten up by the gangs down the street by the library. No, Chris was sitting right in front of him, alive and well and singing along to the Chordettes and _completely fucking fine._

 

Chris didn't look up. His hands stopped tapping to the beat and he stopped singing, leaving the music playing through the speakers clearly but it couldn't have felt more silent. Gordie could hear his heart pounding, the blood rushing through his skin boiling hot and furious. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides and tears threatened to spill down his cheeks had Gordie not wiped them away before they had the chance. The tune on the jukebox had stopped as the last track playable, leaving them both feeling empty but still having a thousand words fill up the spaces in between.

 

"I didn't think you cared anymore, Lachance."

 

The cord connecting Gordie to his resistance snapped. He took two, three, four steps each while watching Chris turn his head towards him and look him in the eyes, and punched him straight across the jaw, tilting Chris' head from the force of it. Chris brought his left hand up to his chin, mouth falling open in a quiet _'oh,'_ before meeting his eyes once again with a glint of surprise deep inside of them. Gordie was breathing hard, tears streaming down his face freely now. Chris had only seen Gordie cry once, one time when they went to look for the body in the woods, when Gordie had broken down on his shoulder about Ray, and Denny and his father and how everything wasn't right in the world and how _'it should've been him.'_ He watched him with a concerned look as Gordie buried his face in his hands, trying to stop the shaky breaths he couldn't contain. "Such bullshit," He managed to get out, wiping his sleeve across his eyes, digging into the skin slightly. "You honestly cannot tell me that you think that because we don't talk anymore that I ever stopped caring about you."

 

Chris dropped his gaze, the eye contact suddenly becoming too much for him, too much weight to carry. The smile that was set upon his face before Gordie had walked in was gone, instead replaced with a grimace that fit his demeanor perfectly. Too many times Gordie had seen the same look on Chris' face when his father had beat him or when he had completely ignored him. Chris had learned quickly that ignoring him was better than leaving him with bruised cheeks, but the face had always stayed the same.

 

The difference was that in those years when they would still talk, when they would still kiss each other like they were each other's clean oxygen in a toxic environment, when they would still stay up in the treehouse sitting too close to each other for their own good, the scowl on Chris' face would always change into a too bright smile that would hurt your eyes if you stared at it for too long. Teddy and Vern had always told Gordie that Chris was more jolly and easy going when he was with him than anyone else, and Gordie had believed it - he was the exact same way. But this time, standing in Chris' apparent new home, the scowl didn't go away.

 

Chris shifted his jaw, trying to massage out the pain, and spoke, "I spent twice as many nights thinking you didn't give a rat's ass about me than didn't, so that says something about you."

 

This wasn't the way Gordie thought this was going to go. He'd thought that whenever he found Chris he'd jump into his arms and spin around like in one of those cheesy romance movies that his mom and Denny used to watch with him when he was little. Now, that couldn't be further from the truth. All he wanted to do was drag Chris back to Castle Rock where he'd be safe and have a home, even if that meant staying with Gordie while the police further questioned his father.

 

"That just proves that you're too broken to believe anyone could actually care about you anymore,"

 

Chris flinched. Bullseye.

 

"Y'know Gordie," He said with a sneer. "You're absolutely right." Chris threw his hands up and smiled, but there was no warmth behind it. "So is this why you came all the way down here? Just to _degrade_ me? Not surprising - you've always been good at that," He started walking towards the back of the diner, pushing the door to the kitchen open with a loud banging noise as it hit the wall. Gordie started after him, pushing the chair that Chris had been tapping on out of the way. He sniffled. "I came here to find you, but right now it's obvious you didn't want me to." He pushed open the door that had shut in his face, letting it slam into the wall again. Chris had pulled a protein bar out of one of the cabinets and hoisted himself up onto the countertop, currently trying to rip open the small packaging with his teeth. Gordie caught Chris' wrists in his hands when he pulled them down from his face. "Why did you leave?" He pleaded, a pained noise caught somewhere in the back of his throat. He wasn't crying anymore, but tears still threatened to make an appearance once again. Had Chris really thought that he didn't care about him anymore? Chris pulled his hands away from Gordie's and tucked them into his lap after setting the protein bar down beside him.

 

Gordie grabbed his hands this time, tugging Chris a bit forward but not enough for him to lose balance and fall. Gordie tightened his grip slightly, signifying that he wasn't going to let go. Chris tried to tug away once before sighing and giving up. He tilted his head down, leaving golden hair covering his baby blue eyes. Gordie tried again.

 

"Why?" His voice broke, sending a shudder through them both. His eyes were still on Chris', but Chris didn't dare meet his gaze. Too afraid that he'd break down in tears too, too afraid that he'd cling to Gordie like a lost child and bury his face in his shirt, too afraid that he'd revel in the familiar scent and draw closer, closer, closer, until it was too close for Chris to deny that he hadn't still been thinking of Gordie in this way since they stopped being friends.

 

Chris hadn't been lying. In the outer layers of his skin, there was still a part of Chris that believed - that  _wanted_ to believe that Gordie still felt the same things he did, still had a part of him that cared for Chris in any tiny way. But deep below the surface where everything actually mattered and had an influence, any part of Chris that told him that he still mattered to Gordie sent off booming red alarms to his brain and all his nerves shut down in an attempt to keep him from the truth.

 

Chris took a deep breath, and spoke, "I had to get away from that town, Gordie," He started, already feeling like he was going to puke out his guts. "I had to get away from my dad, and from Ace Merill and his friends, and from Ray Brower's dead body in the forest and the treehouse. I was about to fucking detonate and destroy everything in my path. I never wanted to leave you feeling like this was your fault or that you had something to do with it, but- damn, Gordie, I couldn't handle it anymore," The words spewed out of his mouth in one go. It left him feeling like all the air in his lungs was pushed out and replaced with his words that were rapidly filling up the empty space and choking him more and more with every confession.

 

"I never wanted to leave you, but I didn't want you to come looking for me." And that was it, out in the open. He couldn't take it back or say it was a joke, that this all was a joke because the situation was way too serious for Chris to say any of that. His shoulders slumped and he finally, _finally,_ took a breath, the hand that was clamped between Gordie's relaxing from its previous stiff position. Shaky breaths from the both of them and they weren't sure how long they sat there in the near deafening silence - either minutes or hours but neither of them knew what to say, for nothing would ever change them more than what was just said.

 

Chris finally pulled away, fingers falling through Gordie's until there was nothing left to hold and brought his hands up to his face, silently sobbing.

 

Gordie's hands rested on the counter space by the sides of Chris' legs. His eyes were closed and head down, forehead resting against the top of Chris' head. He took steady breaths, in and out, in and out, tried to calm himself down. His brain was processing the information, trying to sort out where it all went wrong, when everything Chris and him had turned into dust and blew away in the wind. Chris was trembling beneath him, heaving with each muffled sob that ripped its way out of his mouth. He was making quiet whimpering noises like he was trying not to scream, like he wanted it all to stop, wanted the world to end while he got sucked in with it.

 

And so Gordie did the only right thing that he could've in that situation. He gave Chris one long, agonizing kiss on the top of his head, hot tears falling into soft hair, before he moved out from between his legs and started walking towards the diner exit. He paused when he got to the frame of the door, the cool air sending a rack of shivers through his body. Down the street were children riding their bikes down the sidewalk, waving to the passing adults as they smiled at them. The sound of Chris' cries was overpowering the car engines turning over at the end of the street towards the library. Gordie sighed, placing his hand on the frame of the door. "We all thought you were dead, you bastard." And he made his way out the door and into the fresh spring air, content on catching the next train home.

 

* * *

 

 

Gordie waited for Chris to come back to Castle Rock. He wondered when the day would come where he would see Chris coming down the dirt path that led into the western towns of Oregon with his backpack overweighing him and a guilty look on his face. He waited for the looks on people's faces when they learned that yes, Chris had been alive all this time. He'd been perfectly fucking fine, actually. Not a single scratch on him. He hadn't been brutally killed or kidnapped or sold to be a sex slave by his own father. No, instead he'd been brushing up on his fixer-upper skills and dancing to the Chordettes while everyone - while _Gordie_ was worried sick about where he had gone.

 

Gordie's still waiting for Chris to come back. A couple weeks later, he was sure that Chris would turn up anytime. He'd taken his sweet time deciding what for right for himself and packed his bags late, but he was making his way across the towns in the way to his home. To _their_ home since they were little, packed with all the good and bad memories, ones when Gordie would sneak candy out of the store without paying for it and share it with Chris and one when Chris had fallen out of the big oak tree outside his front yard when he was seven and Gordie took care of him while Chris' father was out drinking.

 

Chris had never come back to Castle Rock. Gordie had just celebrated his birthday, and it was a week after when the little boy on his small pale green bike came and dropped off the Sunday papers to everyone. The family dog named Gizmo had charged to the front lawn to retrieve the yellow pages, and when he'd dropped it off in Gordie's lap it was covered in dog saliva. Ads for air fresheners and overpriced televisions covered the back page, along with radio station numbers for the current favorites and posters for movies that were said to come out any day now for the people who had the money to pay for them. Gordie turned the newspaper over.

 

'Attorney Christopher Chambers Fatally Stabbed In Restaurant' - September 4th, 1985.


End file.
